Đề tài Techniques to improve short-term memory in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting

e consecutive interpreting. According to the literature of short-term memory in consecutive interpreting, surveys were carried out with forty –five (45) third and fourth year English majors at HPU. This supplied true situations of this issue. By gathering material and analyzing information, this paper reveals the usage of short-term memory in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting by learners of this subject at HPU. Therefore, it highlights the role of short-term memory and encourages using this useful skill. 2. Subject of the study The theme of the thesis is “Short-term memory in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting”; hence, its structure is to demonstrate the aspects of the theme: the role of short-term memory, the relation between short-term memory and English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting and the suggestions to improve this skill. This study is aimed to make profit for interpreters in general and for language students in particular. Admittedly, students become the major subjects of this study, who are interviewed in the poll or asked in the questionnaire in terms of primary research methodology. The respondents of this questionnaire survey are forty-five (45) third and fourth year honor 14 students in Faculty of Foreign Languages, HPU. They are selected because they were taking the course of translation in their curricula. Indirectly, by means of secondary research methodology, this study also gets access to language students (or interpreting trainees) through some researches already conducted by other authors and published in previous books, journals, magazines, thesis or other kinds of documents. 3. Instrumentations In order to finish this study, the combination of primary and secondary research methodology was conducted. Besides, the method of collection data, actual experience and revision are implemented. The questionnaire survey was created to find out the actual appliance of short-term memory in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting of English majors. Multiple choice questions were designed (see Appendix). Some direct interviews were also applied. The students were asked to answer questionnaires relating the following issues:  Investigate the current situation of HPU students’ use of short-term memory.  Analyze the difficulties they encounter when using STM in English – Vietnamese consecutive interpreting.  Evaluate STM in English – Vietnamese practice and improvement of students.  Propose suggestions to improve in English – Vietnamese consecutive interpreting. In addition, the research was finished thanks to the advice of the instructor who has been working in the field of interpreting and obtains much experience of short-term memory skill. 4. Procedures The author had to read many related information and references. It also took time to surf internet to search useful websites which discuss short-term memory. Next, interviews and surveys with friends and third year English 15 majors at the university were conducted. Finally, based on collected data and careful analysis, the study was accomplished. 5. Findings and discussion Surveys were carried out to find out the current situation of using short- term memory in English to Vietnamese consecutive in interpreting of English majors. This research methodology is used to assess the below issues:  The current situation and students’ awareness of STM in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting.  The practice of students to improve short-term memory  The difficulties students facing with when practice short-term memory.  The role of teachers in STM application for students’ interpreting skill. 5.1 The current situation and students’ awareness of STM in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting. Question 1: What is average length of information that you can remember? Table 1: The average length of information that can be remembered Answer Choices Percentage A. a clause 37/45 82 % B. a sentence 4/45 9 % C. several sentences 4/45 9% D. a paragraph 0/45 0% This question was given out to recognize the average length of information that students can remember. As the table 1 reveals that most students are able to remember full information of a clause which accounts for 82 %, while no one can keep in mind a paragraph. From one sentence to several sentences, few students can remember the information fully, which only account for the similar proportion (9%). From this table, it shows the STM ability of students. Students should pay more attention to short-term memory and the improvement is really in need. 16 Question 2: Which percentage of information you can remember after the first listening? Table 2: Percentage of information remembered after the first listening Answer Choices Percentage A. 10% 8/45 18% B. 20 – 50 % 33/45 74% C. 70% 2/45 4% D. 100% 0/45 0% E. No answer 2/45 4% The most noticeable finding is the answer B with 74% (33 out of 45 students). The average percentage of information that they can remember after first listening is from 20 to 50 %. Beside this number, there are 18% of participants remembering only 10% of content of the text, only 4% of them that can achieve 70% of information after first listening. It is understandable when there is no one can remember full content of the source language text. It is surprising that 2 participants, accounting for 4% did not give their answer for this question. When being asked about this, they said that they did not give answer because they remember nothing after first listening. Those proportions reflect the state that most of students cannot remember content of the source language text only with once listening. Meanwhile in the real context, the speaker will never repeat what he has said unless there are technical terms or cultural expression those needs to be explained. Question 3: Which percentage of information you can remember after the second listening? 17 Table 3: Percentage of information remembered after the second listening Answer Choices Percentage A. 20 – 50% 12/45 27% B. 50 – 70% 32/45 71% C. 100% 1/45 2% After the second listening, 71% of participants state that they can remember 50 – 70% of information, 15% of them can remember 27% of information and only 2% (1 student) can achieve full content of the source language text. In comparison with the first time of listening, percentage of information that students can remember increases. With this percentage, however, students have not been able to perform in the real interpreting context yet. Question 4: Which percentage of information you can remember after the third listening? Table 4: Percentage of information remembered after the third listening Answer Choices Percentage A. 20 – 50% 5/45 15% B. 50 – 70% 38/45 85% C. 100% 2/45 5% It can be inferred from the table that after three times listening, most students can remember the given information with 85% (38 out of 45 students). Only %5 of participants state that they can obtain full information while 15% of them need practice more. Such students cannot achieve half of information in the third time of listening. From the proportion, it is necessary to practice more listening ability. To become a good interpreter, English majors at HPU really need work harder. 18 Question 5: How long do you need to rearrange information before interpreting from English to Vietnamese? Table 5: Time need to rearrange information before interpreting Answer Choices Percentage A. 0s 0/45 0 B. 3-5s 6/45 14% C. 5-15s 25/45 55% D. About 1 minute 14/45 31% The results of this question indicate the time that students require to rearrange and manage information before they interpret from English to Vietnamese. As the table shows, no one can immediately interpret without any preparation time. The duration of time varying from 3-5 only account for 14%. About over half of surveyed students need 5-15s to manage the information before interpreting. This duration is the most suitable because it is enough to give out target language utterance. Nearly one-third of them require about 1 minute rearranging ideas. Such students will be able to lose information due to too long period of time. From this proportion, it can be seen that the English majors at HPU have already made use of short-term memory during interpretation. However, they need improve more to achieve its best effectiveness. Question 6: How do you remember the information? Table 6: Way of remembering the source information Answer Choices Percentage A. Key words, numbers, figures, etc. 43/45 95% B. Every word 0/45 0% C. No answer 2/45 5% 19 On the whole, most students (95%) find the effective way to remember information. They only remember the key words. However, 5% (2 out of 45 participants) do not know how to remember source information effectively; hence they chose “no answer”. There is no student choose “every word”. This shows that it is not a useful way to remember information. Of course, nobody can response exactly every word they’ve heard. In short, to become a real interpreter, English majors should practice more and promote their ability. 20 Question 7: How long do you need to rearrange information before interpreting? Table 7: Time needed to rearrange information before interpreting Answer Choices Percentage A. 1 – 3 seconds 3/45 7% B. 4 – 5 seconds 16/45 35% C. more than 5 seconds 26/45 58% The table 7 indicates the time that students need to rearrange information before interpreting. Most of the participants (58%) need more than 5 seconds to retrieve and arrange information before interpreting, followed by a time segment of 4 – 5 seconds with 27% of respondents. Number of students who need 1 – 3 seconds to rearrange information occupies the smallest proportion (7%) As mentioned in the previous chapters, short-term memory in interpreting includes encoding of information from the source language, storing of information, retrieval of information and decoding of information into the target language. These stages happen quickly and continuously. Thus, spending more than 5 seconds for information rearrangement may cause the loss of information in interpreting. When students spend too much time to rearrange the former information, they will fail to process the new one. This shows that students are not successful in using their short-term memory to have quick response to the source text. 21 Question 8: How can you evaluate at English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting? Table 8: Self-evaluation of interpreting work Answer Choices Percentage A. 30% 10/45 22.5 % B. 50% 25/45 55% C. 70% 10/45 22.5% D. 100% 0/45 0% This table shows how students value their results in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting. No one feel confident enough to finish a total interpretation. About half of them think that they can complete 55% of the work. With the similar rate (22.5%), some better students can achieve about 70% while consecutively interpreting English to Vietnamese; whereas, some think that they can only accomplish one-third of the work. From collected figures, it can be inferred that interpreting is a hard subject and students haven’t possessed enough skills including short-term memory to get the best result of interpreting work. 1.2 Students’ practice to improve STM Question 9: How often do you practice to improve short-term memory? Table 9: The frequency of practice short-term memory Answer Choices Percentage A. Always 4/45 9 % B. Sometimes 20/45 45 % C. Rarely 11/45 37 % D. Never 4/45 9 % 22 It can be inferred from the result of Table 9 that the frequency students practice the short-term memory skill is so different. Nearly half of them notice the importance of this skill and sometimes practice for this. About 9% of participants seriously take care of short-term memory’s role; whereas, the same number indicates that some are so lazy and not aware of short-term memory in interpretation. The proportion 37% should be alert; such students need to pay attention more to practice short-term memory. According to the collected data, it reveals that students haven’t paid enough attention to practice short-term memory. Therefore, they should spend more time training short-term memory. Additionally, techniques need to be proposed to encourage them. Question 10: What sources of language (English) do you often listen to? Table 10: Kinds of source language (English) often listened to Answer Choices Percentage A. CDs of text books 10/45 22.5% B. VOA news 25/45 55% C. Complex sources 10/45 22.5% Table 10 shows some sources of English that students often listen to. As collected figures, about 55% of surveyed students listen to VOA news. This reveals that they seem to like listening to American voice with slow speed. Nearly one-fifth of students use CD of text book as their source language to interpret. With the same proportion, complex source accounts for 22.5%. Such students can have more chances in order to access to many accents of English from different regions. Knowing what sources of English students often listen to can understand their habits of listening. This suggests giving out techniques to help them improve listening ability and short-term memory. 23 1.3 Difficulties in practicing STM Question 11: What are causes of your difficulties in short-term memory? Table 11: Reasons for difficulties in short-term memory Answer Choices Percentage A. Brain structure 4/45 8 % B. External environment 13/45 28 % C. Topic of source language 13/45 28 % D. Your listening ability 15/45 36 % The table 11 illustrates the causes of difficulties that affect capacity of short-term memory. It is only about 8 % of students blame for their brain structure. While the proportion of listening ability accounts for 36 %. For the next reasons, external environment and topic of source language are at the same rate (28%). The students mostly realize that short-term memory is not a physical problem. They fall into difficulties in short-term memory by such reasons that can be managed. To get advanced results, the English majors should pay attention to improve their listening skill as well as background knowledge such as vocabulary. Question 12: What types of information do you feel difficult to remember? Table 12: Types of information causing difficulty to remember Answer Choices Percentage A. Numbers, private names, dates 18/45 40 B. List of items 17/45 38 C. Signal/ Abbreviation 5/45 11 D. Terminology 5/45 11 24 From the proportion, it reveals that students sometimes find it difficult to remember numbers, private names, dates and list of items with 40% and 38% of respondents respectively. In addition, 5 participants, accounting for 11%, have problem in remembering signal/abbreviation. The same proportion (11%) gets difficulty in remembering terminology. This finding shows that students should pay more attention to learn pronunciation of private names, practice memorizing numbers and dates more as well as enrich vocabulary on specific fields such as economy, instructions, ship building, etc. 1.4 The role of teachers in STM application for students’ interpreting skill Question 13: How important are the teachers in improving students’ memorizing skill? Table 11: Teacher’s role in improving students’ memorizing skill Answer Choices Percentage A. Very important, as an instructor, a guider 28/45 62% B. Only important in some cases 13/45 29% C. Not very important, students make progress by themselves 4/45 9% Table 11 reveals that a considerable number of students (62%) highly appreciate the role of teacher in improving their memorizing skill. For them, teachers are very important, they play role as instructors, who give them valuable instructions to enhance their short-term memory skill. Besides, that the teacher is only important in some cases is the assessment of 29% of respondents. There are also 4 students, accounting for 9% deny the role of teacher in improving their STM. For these students, teacher is not very important, they themselves make progress. In short, from the proportion suggests that the teachers has play crucial role in helping students’ short-term memory improvement. 25 6. Conclusion Thanks to the data collected from the survey, many current situations as well as useful information from English majors are given. Most students are aware of the role of short-term memory in interpreting. However, very few learners apply it effectively during interpretation, particularly English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting. Some difficulties affecting interpreting also found out. Additionally, the realistic results of interpreting are directly revealed by learners themselves. Moreover, according to statistic on how frequencies the students spend time practicing short-term memory, it is possible to say that students should pay more attention to this skill. They need pay more time and work harder to achieve better results. Finally, the role of teachers in short-term memory improvement is recognized. 26 CHAPTER IV: SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE SHORT-TERM MEMORY IN ENGLISH TO VIETNAMESE CONSECUTIVE INTERPRETING 1. Introduction Short-term memory plays a very important role in achieving quality of interpreting process. Therefore, an interpreter not only prepares good background related to the issue but he/or she also needs to have a good short- term memory. With aim of helping learners improve their results of interpreting, I analyzed some useful techniques which can assist in training short-term memory in this chapter. It includes listening improvement, memory training games, retelling in source language and mnemonic to memory. They considerably help improve short-term memory in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting. Additionally, they can be references for further matter related to interpreting. 2. Techniques to improve short-term memory in English to Vietnamese consecutive interpreting 2.1. Listening improvement 2.1.1 Introduction Generally, listening skill is one of the most important skills in learning English. All professional interpreters or learners need to be good at listening skill. Many are really good at this skill; however, the practice of listening is never useless and enough to achieve high quality in interpreting. If the interpreter cannot hear for a while, it will disturb him/her from receiving the next information. This means that the process of short-term memory is broken. Obviously, it will be difficult to give out utterance in target language. Improving listening will aid to increase short-term memory 27 capacity. Therefore, it is vital to consider listening improvement in order to enhance short-term memory. 2.1.2 What to pay attention pay attention to accent: In fact, an interpreter has to interpret for many people coming from different countries, regions. Therefore, it is better to listen more and more with many sources of tape with various accents of men and women, the young and the oldLike Vietnamese, people coming from different parts of the country have their own accent and dialect. English is spoken by people all over the world; hence, the interpreter should get accustomed to listening to as many accents as possible. Distinguish similar sounds: in English, there are many words which seem to have similar sounds but differ in meaning. Here the reference lists: Angel /'eindʒəl/ (n) = thiên thần Angle /'æηgl/ (n) = góc (trong hình học) Dessert /di'zə:t/ (n) = món tráng miệng Desert /'dezət/ (n) = sa mạc Later /`leitə/ (adv) = sau đó, rồi thì (thường dùng với động từ thời tương lai) Latter/'lætə/ (adj) = cái thứ 2, người thứ 2, cái sau, người sau. Affect /ə'fekt/ (v) = tác động đến Effect /i'fekt/ (n) = ảnh hưởng, hiệu quả; Emigrant /'emigrənt/ (n) = người di cư Immigrant /'imigrənt/ (n) = người nhập cư Elude /i'lu:d/ (v) = tránh khỏi, lảng tránh, vượt ngòai tầm hiểu biết. Allude /ə'lu:d/ (v) = nói đến ai/cái gì một cách rút gọn hoặc gián tiếp; ám chỉ; nói bóng gió Complement /'kɔmpliment/ (n) = bổ ngữ Compliment / 'kɔmplimənt/ (n) = lời khen ngợi Secret /'si:krit/ = bí mật Cigarette /,sigə'ret/ = điếu thuốc 28 Pay attention to speed: in English - Vietnamese consecutive interpreting process, the duration of speech can vary from short to long (it is up to the speaker). However, in reality, it is continuously spoken out and consists of a huge of information. Therefore, to become a succeeded interpreter, it is valuable to get a good listening ability. Gradually expand speed of the speaker and then try to remember as much as possible. This not only broadens listening ability but also helps enhance memory skill. 2.1.3 Auditory short-term memory improvement a. Comprehensive Listening This is a basic approach based on the utilization of audiotapes. The appropriateness of the tapes is determined by the individual as much as the input must be of high interest. However, we must develop function by playing tapes of different speeches associated with the increase of length and the variety of topics aimed to listeners’ adjustment. The purpose of this approach is to help listeners remember as much as possible. There is no pause or stop during listening process in order to attract concentration of listeners to encode information and summarize the content after. Illustrated example 1: The windshield wiper was invented in 1930 by Mary Anderson, a woman from Alabama, USA. While Anderson was riding a street car during a trip to New York City, she noticed that the driver often had to get out to wipe snow from the windshield. She quickly drew an idea for mechanical windshield wiper in her sketchbook. Later she tried to sell her idea to a Canadian Company, but the company decided that the invention wouldn’t be successful. Anderson gave up on trying to sell her invention and never made any money from it. (Cited from Let’s Talk 2 – Leo Jones, page 179) This text is quite short and simple. After listening to the text, the students are required to remember some main ideas: - Topic: the invention of windshield wiper 29 - Inventor: Mary Anderson - Year: 1903 Illustrated example 2: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. This is Captain Anderson speaking. On behalf of myself and the crew, I’d like to welcome you on board this Air Magnesia flight to London. May I apologize for the short delay in our departure. This was caused by a problem with one of our tires but everything’s all right now and we should be able to make up for the lost time. We shall be flying at an attitude of 30,000 feet and our estimated time of arrival is 19.30 local time. Weather condition are good but we may experience a little turbulence for the first 30 minutes so I would suggest you keep your safety belts fastened. During the flight, dinner will be served and our cabin crew will (Cited from Think first Certificate – Jonnaunton, page 176) This text is longer and contains more specific information than the previous one. Thus when listening to the text, students must pay more attention to the text to remember the main ideas of the text: - Name of Captain: Anderson - Name of the flight: Air Magnesia - Event: short delay, the reason of delay, arrival time, etc. b. Intensive listening Another fundamental approach of auditory short - term memory training is intensive listening, that is, listeningx to specific information, then repeating the items as exact as possible. Due to the requirements of this method and short - term memory (maximum memory capacity of five to seven digits), the time duration shouldn’t be too long and the conveyed meaning shouldn’t be too complicated. The purpose of this approach is to encourage the quick response to the received information and the accuracy of language expression. Only when 30 listeners can properly understand and recall what has been heard can they have an overview of the whole passage. The simplest exercise of this approach is sequences of which five or six objects are listed in the tapes. At first, listeners are asked to repeat exactly what the list includes. More difficult, the sequence of these objects must be respected when named by the listeners. Illustrated example 1: